There has been a ton of huge surprises in the 2013 Major League Baseball regular season. From Chris Davis hitting home runs at an unprecedented rate to the highly touted LA teams underachieving. There has been a lot to talk about that’s for sure. But the biggest surprise of the season thus far has got to be how well the Pittsburgh Pirates have played through their first 84 games.

The Pirates currently have the best record in the National League at 52-32. The main reason for the early success of this club is the dominance of their pitching staff. They have the best team ERA in all of baseball at a 3.16 ERA to go with the best opponent batting average at only .228! This ball club has been living off their pitching and this team is no fluke.

This team has been built around their top-prospects. The star of this team is clearly Andrew McCutchen who the Pirates drafted themselves, along with Neil Walker and 22 year-old Gerrit Cole. They also went after other big name players who were said to be on the decline; IE A.J. Burnett. One of the other interesting moves that the Pirates made before the season even started was shipping away one of the most under-rated closers in baseball at the time in Joel Hanrahan. Don’t worry, they clearly knew what they were doing in signing the now National League leader in saves Jason Grilli.

You really have to tip your hat to the GM and front office who has been working for quite sometime now to put together a team that can break the .500 mark. It is finally looking like 2013 could be that year. The only real question mark is if the offense can keep pace with their amazing pitching staff.

To this point in the season the Pirates have the fifth worst batting average in baseball at a mark of .243. Clearly since the batting average isn’t great the other offensive numbers won’t be amazing either. They are fourth to last in RBIs at 314 but are also fourth in stolen bases at 55. If this team wants to have long term success they are going to need more than the dangerous bat of McCutchen to get them to the finish line. 

For now the Pirates are looking like one of the best teams in baseball and the only question that remains is whether or not they can continue to keep up at this pace. We have seen it the past two seasons now with this club. They get off to a hot start but really start to fall apart come August and September. Although the way their pitching staff has looked it is hard to envision this team having a drastic fall off like in the past.

If this Pirates club can make the playoffs they would also be ended some ridiculously awful streaks; streaks that you don’t want your team to involved in. It has been 20 years since this team has went .500 and the fans of the ‘Burg are ready for all of that to come to an end. This will not be an easy division to win as the Reds and Cardinals will be hot on their tail but we could be watching the first winning season since Michael Jordan was balling in his prime.